Truths of Old

So. Tomorrow, I start "work".
I think part of me is in denial. It's been so wonderful, these past few months being on a perpetual vacation. Being master of myself again. (more or less) Waking up every morning and thinking - Windows 95! What do you want to do today?

It feels almost as if I wasted the time, and yet I've done quite a bit too.

Today, for instance, I fell down repeatedly trying to remember how to skate. That was fun. :)

A certain other "skating-newby" turned out to be incredibly graceful on the ice... because of her blading experience. Growl.

Anyway.

Note of the day :

Mammon Inc, by Hwee Hwee Tan - do NOT read this book. Shite book. Stupid star wars references. And I think it goes to show that people only see what they want to, and not what is really around them. She whinges about a horrible third-world backwater Singapore that she grew up in, and is so incredibly enamoured by the colours of london, and its antiquity and nobility, and then whinges about how she's marginalised in england because she's one of the only chinese people around.

Funny, I grew up in Singapore, same's her, and worked and lived in England for close to 8 years same's her, and I'll be blowed but she's not writing about either the same Singapore or the same England as I've seen, lived, tasted and breathed.

Singapore - ruled by superstition and taoism, where Christianity is an oddity and everything is all attap houses and underfilled rice bowls? Puh-lease. Roll eyes. I see a shiny, soul-less city populated by diverse groups trying to pass as a whole; I see Christians, Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists and... lotsa other people wandering the street looking hot, bothered and occasionally upset. What fool would claim Singapore is a backwater when nearly everyone has a car these days, and heaps of taxi drivers appear to be retrenched engineers?

London - bastion of the white man, and nobility and antiquity??? Geez louise. One wonders, reading her, if she's ever really stepped foot into the multicultural metropolis that is London - or, for that matter, ventured out into the rest of England. Curry is practically the national dish these days, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a really English-english person in central london. As for antiquity... the woman has clearly never seen a council flat. I don't remember a pretty mist settling daily on london, and I certainly don't recall the city turning a fuzzy shade of blue at dusk. I recall it usually turning from grey (rainy) to dark-grey (night) to dim orange (streetlamps) most days. Sometimes the clouds broke and we were treated to pretty spectacular sunsets. The city turned gold and slightly reddish-pink at those times. Other days the pollution and low-flying clouds caught the sun and the sky would fill with this weird smudge of fiery yellow, sorta like the northern lights only different.

I certainly never seen the london or even England she's writing about, and Professor A-doy? Coruscent tower??! Dagobath hall?!?!?!

Puke.

If there's one thing that's pathetic, it's a shite author taking herself seriously. She doesn't seem to be kidding around, slipping all these peurile references to the Force into her little collection of well-written doggerel. It's... not funny. :|

I just noticed this piece by Mrbrown (?by a Today reader) about the evils of profane, raunchy songs and their potential detriment to society, the environment, and the fabric of reality itself.

I couldn't help but smile a little as I recalled hearing Alanis Morisette ask "are you thinking of me when you ...C her" (subtle censorship that, small insertion of silence. no discordant beep here, just white noise) as I was driving the other day. (You Oughta Know, Alanis Morisette)

I've been away a looong time. I'd forgotten that in our prudish virginal asian-ness we censored the horrific 'F' word here in Singaland. (But kids start shagging here at 12. mm.) Funny, that. I overheard two sixteen year olds standing at a traffic light today apparently discussing life in general. "Eh, Kan Ni Nah Beh Chao Ji Bai, Fuck You. No, Fuck YOU. no, FUCK you. etc"

bemused. Well, they're sure not learning it off the radio.

One thing that strikes me about swearing in Singapore is how venemously it's done. Over in good ol' England swearing's kinda jocular, your girlfriend must be a great shag, laugh laugh, fuck you mate, patpat on shoulder. Shove. Harder pat. Eventually it's the shoving seems to provoke the first punch, not the words. That and the 20 pints of Strongbow beforehand. But the swearing itself seems pretty innocuous. We used to swear a lot in casualty. Especially whenever the boys in green brought in a new patient with pseudo chest pain. (grooooan. will you wankers please go away...)

Over here, stone cold sober teenagers stand at traffic lights and fuck each other. Where is the decency I ask you.

Speaking of decency, while I'm precariously perched the proverbial Singalandic high horse (must empathise la. This virginal stuff is quite fun. hee hee.) I have to protest Celine Dion's latest beautiful boy song. Seriously, read the lyrics and tell me it doesn't sound just a little paedophilic to you :

I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we'll both just have to be patient
Cause it's a long way to go,

eEeeeeeyer...

...cool.
snigger.

for anyone with half a mind to watch 5x2... DON'T.

I reckon the director should be hit about the head with a 2x4 repeatedly. Till he dies. Or at least repents.

At least in Swimming Pool (I had the misfortune of catching that) the lead actress was a teenager with a beautiful body; it did help a little when she got naked and jiggy (which was most of the movie), and at the end of the day it did have a semi-decent plot involving sex, lust, and an audience struggling to understand something that might conceivably have been a statement by the author. Or not.

Heck it even had a murder thrown in. Whee.

I'll confess that I didn't get it, but something about it was compelling.

5x2 is a whole different kettle of squid. Dead squid. Five days old and decomposing. The film begins at the end and takes us back through time. Some people were impressed by that and thought it was very "artistic" - to which I would level the accusation that said some people have no idea what "art" is and would call a public potty art if some artist signed his name on it. For fucks sakes stop to ask yourself the question WHY is it shot backwards?

Pause.

No answer. None plausible, in my mind, anyhow. I don't buy the whole philosophical hypothesis that it is an attempt to show that love doesn't last. I think that's really digging deep. And I certainly don't think it salvaged a weak storyline that, if done in prospective rather than retrospective might have done a soap opera proud.

****spoiler****

(film is basically a protracted question - is fidelity possible?)

man and wife getting divorced before a court judge. cue 5 min of civil legislature read in a monotone. Great way to start a movie with a bang, hey?

audience dozes off.

5 min later, couple have divorced.
Naturally, since they are french, the first thing they do is go back to their apartment and get naked. Apparently this is a french way of saying they are still friends. Cue full frontal nudity (female) just because.

Woman suddenly decides she doesn't want to have sex after getting the guy all randy.
Guy rapes her. Cue dramatic teardrop sliding down face. At this point, re-minisce considers walking out but all the women are, for some reason, tearing self-centredly because they're desperately trying to empathise. Re-minisce on the other hand smells the nauseating scent of melodrama disguised as art and doesn't want to have his day ruined still further after concert fiasco.

woman shouts at man and bangs door on way out of apartment. Oh, wow.

Cut to next scene. Woman and man throwing dinner-do for his brother, who is gay and has shown up with his teenaged lover. lots of wine, discussions about fidelity - is it desirable, older gay man asks younger gay man who thinks it is unnecessary, and has cheated on him numerous times, older gay man asks younger gay man if he would mind if he had cheated on him (all these hes are getting confusing, he he.) and younger man says of course he will mind.

man (straight) then confesses he has cheated on wife, but only in an orgy with her watching, while he shafts some woman and gets shafted himself by a man up the butt. uh-huh... right. yeah. plot device, "surprise" +/- "revulsion".

By this time re-minisce is really sick of movie but female companion has fallen asleep, or looks like she has. bugger. so much for my uh, withdrawal from hell.

cut to next scene, woman having baby, baby has placenta praevia (for those in the know), husband unconcerned when contacted, doesn't wanna go to hospital, goes to hospital, sees premmie in incubator and runs away. cue lots of angsty and emotion from woman and her parents. blea.

cut to next scene, woman and man getting married, extended dancing scenes lasting FOREVER for no reason, slow-motion capture of dancing scene while music changes from festive to funereal, for NO REASON. uh huh. yep. back to bridal bedroom, woman and man fooling around on bed with clothes half-off, woman goes to toilet to take wedding dress off completely because apparently they can't manage all the fiddly bits in bed (ha, for shame) and when she comes back out sexy sexy in white garters and bra and panties but new groom too tired after wine and falls into deep coma.

Woman puts clothes over sexy sexy underwear (har. jeans over garters. can ah. okay... shrug.) and wanders outside, looks at her parents dancing, smiles, wanders some more, sits on a log, and therefore (note the subtlety. therefore.) an american man appears out of nowhere, shares a ciggy with her, feels her up to her weak protests, snogs her (to no protests) and then cut to morning when she is running back to bedroom after apparent all-night fuck in the bushes with american man, on her wedding night.

Note to women, re-minisce hypothesizes that movie is trying to tell us : if your husband isn't up for it, don't worry there will be an american man somewhere out there lurking around the corner from you in your hotel all up for filling you up nicely like a gas pump. rolls eyes.

By this time most of the audience is either dead or glazing over.
Long gratuitious scene about how woman first met man when he was seeing another woman. Oh I can't do this any longer.

The movie just sucked bigtime.

Take it from me.

And if any of you are stupid enough to still catch it, someone explain to me why the morning romp in the sand while man's girlfriend is having a nice trek in the jungle (which, in directors mind probably translates into a 20 on 1 gangbang) winds up the movie with man and wife-to-be diving into the sea at sunset. What gives? I suppose it was some kinda sexual time-warp?

*****
In other news, Re-minisce will be listing mr miyagi and some other wonderful writers on his blogroll, soon. Someday. When he overcomes his inherent laziness to tweak that template...

My body is quite literally falling to pieces. But I fervently believe that the spirit will hold them all together. Or at least numb the pain. Hic.

Anyhow, I had another fencing lesson today. The coach was most unsympathetic, telling me to stretch out more, and give my all... so I tried, despite all the creaky joints. And those thighs... ouch.

For those not in the know, fencing is probably the most enjoyable way to tone your thighs and bum. (great for women, not so good for men). For us blokes, the appeal (in sabre at least) lies in getting to THWACK someone real hard with a sword, and getting hit back in return. I dunno that I like the latter bit so much, but I sure have a lot of bruises to show for it.

*****
This afternoon was spent watching a "concert".

Fooled again by the mother. What was described as a Concert by the Tang Quartet (the lure) turned into a masterclass given by the Tang Quartet for aspiring music students.

Don't get me wrong, the students were all very good, and technically perfect... but I'd gone with my heart set on a concert. Part of me wanted to be wowed. Instead I was treated to rather... dead music. And I positively HATE hearing beethoven played precisely and soul-lessly... it... gnaws at me.

So in short, I had a crap afternoon feeling really.... let down as it ground on, and on, and on. Some of the student-quartets had brilliant leaders, which somehow made it worse for me, hearing someone playing their heart out and dragging their 3 accompanists through the mud... sigh.

I guess I'm just... finicky. I expected fine wine and got Tesco (NTUC) take out.

shrug.

At least I've gotten my own back... while my mum was out the other day I did a stealth-mop of the corridor outside my room with detergent. And she didn't notice! HA.

One of my "friends" recently told me she thought it was a good thing I'd come back because my mum-blog thingies are hilarious...

some friends I have. mutter.

*****
Does it strike anyone else as odd that Nokia's predictive text thingummy recognises the word "WALAU" but not "SPELLCHECK"...

Singapore is very hot. It is so hot here people's brains melt everytime they disagree. What transpires is a cat-fight very poorly masked (by the few who bother) with vague and fake attempts at almost-civility. Often they preface their nastiness with openers like "Thank you for your kind.." or "Well spoken..." then proceed to make a 180 degree turnaround that would do the men in white proud, and also quite possibly have saved the RSS Sinkalot.

Certain personality traits appear more prevalent in Singaporean society than the rest of the world. These traits include :

1) self-centredness, in a big way
2) defensiveness (lethal combo when coupled with 1.)
3) gracelessness - in speech, in thought, in general attitude
4) die-die-must-win mindset (best in the world! best in the universe! best in own head!)
5) kiasuism (which interestingly seems to be on the downturn)
6) Utter lack of wit
7) A strange tendancy to misapply the term "irony" to things that simply aren't ironic at all.
8) An utter inability to appreciate irony when it IS happening (eg a certain personality telling the country that she always tries her best not to slag off other people... ha.)
9) inability to accomodate other views, without...
10) slamming them

I cannot help but wonder whether these are due to genetic (ie inbreeding) or environmental (eg 40 degree daytime temperature killing brain cells) factors.

On the road home today, some dimwit in a big white car with 2 pathetic little stars stuck onto it swerved right into my lane and slammed on his brakes barely 2 car-lengths ahead of me.

Considering that I was in the extreme right lane doing 90 kmh at the time, and Mr Commandobrain was rapidly decelerating from 70 to 50kmh it was practically divine intervention that my mental images of a white mercedes winding up wrapped around tree and grey merc on its roof being slammed into by an 18-wheeler didn't actualise into reality.

As I played a little tune (probably R&B) on the horn and pulled past, I could feel my index and middle fingers rising to twitch at the white car's driver. (which is a reflex born of living in england for a third my life. It basically means bollocks to you you fucking cunt. I don't do it very often since I have very polite fingers.)

The general, naturally was riding as a passenger (front seat passenger - impressive.) and glared at me as I went past as if I'd done something wrong.

Well, Sir, this is for you, Mr 36 MID. Your driver is a fucking wanker and could have got us both killed if not for the speed of my reflexes, and the guy behind me who could have turned us all into a ham sandwiches.

which brings us nicely to...

*****
The Brush-teef Blog Syndrome

MrBrown recently wrote :

ms. beautifuk thinks Singapore blogging sucks after watching Get Rea!'s piece on Singapore blogging. You know, the one where Xiaxue and Mr Miyagi got interviewed. Oh, she thought Mr Miyagi looked "vaguely gay" and a recluse.

And all this while, I thought he looked hunky and had lots of chio girlfriends. Ok, I should remember not to call other men "hunky", or else others might think I am vaguely gay too.

"Excerpt:

When I read an article in Time about American bloggers, I was impressed. Blogging there is an important political tool, it really makes an impact. People actively follow elections and have opinions on it. Here? People follow Korean drama series and have opinions on it. ("blahblahblah so cute!")

Yes, blogging in Singapura is a disappointment. Even the more well-known blogs here are nothing but a big fat flop. All they do is ramble about their personal lives, which to me, is all wrong. Nobody wants to hear the brain-numbing details."

This is where I flog a dead horse to... uh. afterlife.
Us Singalanders, being singalanders, proceeded to defend Mr Miyagi-san (wipe left... wipe right. wipe left... anyone remember that? I think the chick looked awful but had a great body. cough.) and flog ms beautifuk for daring to slime their darling gayboy. (just kidding, miyagi. I know you're just a happyman with a penchant for orange mocha. heh.)

I think the usual phrases... public envy... publicity... taunting to engage... etc came up. Singalanders are fantastically original like that, everytime anyone dares slander a God in the making, it's obviously all about penis envy.

Well, I decided to give ms beautifuk a... read. READ. Get your minds out of the gutter. And she isn't a bad writer. There's the usual teenaged angst (which, considering she's actually a teenager is excusable I guess) and attitude with the wannabe goth thing going, but she isn't quite... shall we say, as "good" as other local heros of her ilk like a particular Shewhoshallnotbenamed. In case anyone is wondering, I do the whole MoldyVort thing because it stops her hitting this page through the websearches she does for her own name. And it works too, just like my garlic totem keeps pink elephants away and my gorilla's (unmentionables) charm keeps the press at bay. ha.

Thing is nobody seems to have wondered if the... young lady... actually has a point. (Damn it, suddenly I feel like a balding dapper old fogie. Young lady, tidy up your room this instant! laughs.)

I actually recall (cough, wheeze) the advent of the internet. (argh. oldfogeyalert) Shortly after followed the personal webpage. I'll admit I had one of those. (it's still there. I'm hoping one day it'll be an antique and i'll sell it to some poor sap for a million dollars.)

And one of my main grouses (there were quite a few as I recall) was the way everyone "abused" their webpages to write about themselves and their mundane little lives

eg :
"A day in the life of a really cool boring person! See the wUrLd thRU mi EyeZ!
Today, I brushed my teeth. And then I had a shower. After that I thought about changing underwear! etc."

Okay, I'll admit I wasn't much older than ms. beautifuk when I had that thought, but, well, you have to admit that it doesn't exactly make for enthralling reading, and sometimes one has to wonder why people even bother writing play-by-play accounts about their pet goldfish nibbling the algae off their acquarium plants.

She's actually right dammit. Blogging in Singapore - and much of the rest of the world for that matter, IS a big fat flop. People aren't so much writing as scribing. They aren't creating and there certainly isn't any art to it. It's just so many empty words that one suspects don't even mean much to the writers themselves.

But she's also so, so wrong. People DO want to know the mind-numbing details. I liken it to the attraction moths have for those huge moth Electric-chair thingummies. Brigghhht... shinnnyyyy..... *ZZAP*. And so it goes with reality TV - in the UK nurses spend hours glued to the telly watching Big Brother contestants snoring in their beds, hoping that maybe just maybe one o' em will wake up and shag the other. Or at least twitch a little in their sleep.

So too with... certain (unnamed) blogs that have captivated, or are soon due to captivate the media and the public eye through sheer effort and... word has it, zany-ness. Reading... these blogs I can't help but notice that they're essentially the same meme blogs, only dressed up with pictures.

Today, I bought... this. (picture of shoes) And then I did... this (picture.)

For some strange reason I cannot fathom, hordes of teenaged girls seem to be wetting themselves over the featured pictures. I suppose it must be my Y chromosome clouding my objectivity.

To... these writers' credits, they realise that a boring meme-blog simply isn't enough, and so they actually add some meme-thought into the equation. Today, I also thought... (insert attitude thought here)... which made (other person) look so (insert nasty adjective here) and he is really so (ridicule, ridicule). And this, I think is what does it for the BigBrother groupie in all of us. It's... sorta funny, amusing, and keeps us interested. What horrible but funny thought will this person come up with next? It's sort of like hoping for the sequel to Matrix 2 to be better.... or waiting for newcastle to win the league. You know it probably just isn't going to happen... but... you gotta keep watching.

I dunno. I don't think that's quite what a Good blog is supposed to be about.

The generic response to comments like this, of course, is Boo, hiss, you're just jealous, you're a crap writer, get off the web etc. And interestingly, the meme-writers tend to append : your blog is not a blog, it is a diary... when in truth they ought to read what they're writing and tell us all, honestly, that their blogs aren't diaries. Too.

Some technogeek out there once mentioned that true blogs are supposed to be lists of links to interesting websites. Ie a Good blog is actually meant to be boring - or rather, as interesting as an expressway can possibly be. I guess blogs were intended to be the expressways of the internet, linking various entertaining sites to each other for the lay-user's convenience and webbing the web (noo, frodoooo) into... a webbier web. Sue me, it's late and I hurt and I'm sleepy.

What did it in, I reckon, was free blog-hosting for dummies. One-step publishing for morons ensured that even the morons had a voice. Web-pages flocked to blogs, and the web, well, webbed.

Today what we have is a mess of mediocrisy. And I have to admit, I think it's a crying shame that it happened this way. There's days when, seeped in ennui, I fire up my imaginary info-harley and race down the information superhighway in quest of some serious entertainment, only all there ever is to visit or see are innumerable junk-food stands (and of course, outside of Singaland, hordes of virtua-prostitution dens) running all the way from here to eternity. The web has become so incredibly intricate that you actually have to know where the good stuff is to get to it... all the good stuff is hidden in tiny alleys, eclipsed by the poseur-junk all around it.

And so, in my desperation for a quick fix and in the sheer and utter absence of Good Stuff (because these good stuff guys don't always write so often.) one occasionally visits that junkfood stand (although some are pretty much just whorehouses) and chows down on a mc-crap that's bound to bugger up your brain and clog your sensibilities eventually.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm one of the Good Stuff Guys. I tend to rant a lot about nothing in particular, when there's nothing to write about. eg mommys and floors (ha. I cleaned the floor today with detergent while she was out and she still doesn't have a clue! yay me.) I reckon a Good blog is really one where the author shares his/her thoughts with the readers, ... but also invites the reader to think along with the author - and not just to hear his thoughts, but to really think, mull over, chew the free complimentary brain-cud a little and then make his/her own mind up. Certain other blogs have writers penning down their heartbreaks or joys... yes. Selfish, self-centred little thoughts... but if done - just so! with - just the right words - they invoke empathy in their readers... whether intentionally or not. And that is as good as inviting them along on their journeys through life... and that is good writing too.

It's sorta the way Dido reaches out to the crazies that form her following of fans I guess. (brandishes virtual baseball bat. Nobody dare slag her off or so help me...)

Political blogs are another example (but of course they only present one side of the coin, so they have to be read en masse).

Some "ordinary" blogs like MrBrown and Mr Miyagi do subtly attempt to reach under the hood and hotwire their readers' opinions. And they do it pretty well too. So yes you two twits, go ahead and preen, you have re-minisce's vote of confidence as Good Stuff Guys. whatever that means. hah.

So this is where I take my stand, and it looks awfully like the Alamo. Gulp.

I think "good" blogs (to me) ARE intellectual affairs (not necessarily so much about intellectual writers, but about the dynamic between writer and reader) - it's not at all a debate about caviar and jello, or about quality versus public appeal. I think there's writing, and then there's writing - and perhaps it's time we coined a new term to distinguish the two. We have arthouse movies and primetime TV - we make the distinction in film and television... perhaps we should begin to make that distinction in internet-writing as well.

shrug. I'm nae brainy enough to come up with a sensible term. (I kinda like w-blogs. World-domination blogs. Or maybe m-blogs. Muahahahaha-blogs.)

But it sure would be nice if someone started putting up some proper signposts on the information superhighway.

Today I visited the site of my imminent employment.

(Hint : It's a hospital. Subtle, eh?)

Anyhow, I spent a good half hour gawping at fish the size of my car swimming around ponds the size of football fields, and at all the shiny glass walls and windows. I think I can safely say there are NO hospitals in the UK quite as slick, shiny or beautiful. It's clearly designed as a hospital as well, and not from the toilet outwards the way they seem to do it in the NHS.

I blundered into a shopping centre in the hospital. I mean, seriously, what kind of hospital has a mini shopping centre, complete with 7/11, popular bookstore and electrical appliances store? Naturally I had to stop by 7/11 for a slurpee thingummy; it's the whole patient experience thing. I forewent the registration at front desk routine and wandered to medical staffing where I lightened myself of 1 rather expensive bottle of champagne and chatted to a future boss who looked and acted barely older than myself. I suppose she's probably just one of these ageless aes sedai people robert jordan used to write about.

Oh yeah and on the drive back I discovered that it takes a surprising number of muscles in your thighs and bum to operate a car. Believe you me. Especially applying the foot brake at the end of the journey.

In other news, re-minisce hurts again. This fencing with kiddies routine is painful on the body and ego. whimper. creak.

Beginning to wonder if perhaps I should seek proverbial the fountain of youth. These kiddies are so FAST and never seem to run out of beans. Or feel the weather either...

moan, groan.

Today the mother is out. Ha, if I really wanted to I could go over my floor again with super-concentrated cleaner.

But I think instead I shall be responsible and wander out to buy a bottle of champagne for future employers. Somehow. I wish I could just stay in bed and ache.

*****
Do as I say, not as I do.

I'll be the first to confess that I have no qualms about playing matchmaker between my different sets of friends. I don't do it too often, and so far it's happened all of once. They're still together today, five years down the line, although officially they're still furiously denying it to everyone. (and competely isolated from the rest of the world now they have each other...) Sigh. Kids.

I do however have qualms against dating friends' friends - regardless of how attractive I find them. It's probably a double-standard thingummybob innate in me, but it just seems a bad idea. Never have, and never will do I don't think. Which is a bit of a bummer. I guess I'm condemned to hospital take-out eh. Laughs

I must be, right this instant, the only person in the entire country - make that world - whose mother is cross with him for mopping his bedroom floor down with detergent (in water of course.

apparently detergent will stain the floor, and i should just be using elbow grease.

It's probably a good job I bit back my moment of catharsis : my god! my clothes... have all been horribly marred by all that washing powder! Good Grief!!

so right now, as I use my super-concentrated detergent (1 part in 300... sigh) and scrape that film of grey off the floor (Whaddaya know, it IS meant to be a white floor) I can't help but wonder what it'd be like to have a normal family... sigh.

*****
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

so here I am on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor of my room with what is essentially a toothbrush, a pail of (clear) water, and a cloth, acquiring a nice case of clergyman's knee (I suppose, depending on the target audience, I can either claim that it's because I'm exceptionally pious, or talk about missionaries... heh) and contemplating

1) how I will never, ever, upon pain of death, marry a lawyer. Ever. In this lifetime or the next.

2) how a little information taken out of context can lead to so much grief (mine). All I'm trying to do is remove what must be several decades worth of dead skin cells and dustmites from the floor. Is that too much to ask? But apparently according to the lawyer's new line of attack (it is amazing how lawyers can effortlessly change tacks and raise utterly inappropriate evidence to substantiate their arguments in ways that would do even Bush and Kerry proud) she is hyperallergic to the chemicals in cleaning detergent, and they make her knees prickle so I am trying to poison her by cleaning the floor. Apparently she gleaned all this from a pamphlet she picked up at an ENT appointment about Sick Building Syndrome and industrial cleaning agents.

ARRRggh!! Sick.. BUILDING. Aspergillosis. AIR CON. WORKERS TAKING TIME OFF WORK. to go HOME and recuperate. Not. Not. argh!

3) I am beginning to understand why doctors marry doctors as a rule. It is because otherwise the women they love and marry turn into doctor's wives (no offence intended to this doctor's wife of course), ie fecking loony tunes who don't understand what the medical facts they're acquiring actually mean, but are fully justified in imposing their authorities in misimplenting this new-found mis-knowledge on their hapless kids. Looking at my dad I can only assume that the Y "rationality" chromosome crumbles easily after years of attack by two Xs.

4) how essential detergent really is to cleaning floors. Never mind, I console myself : you're getting a nice upper body workout. uh huh.

5) how unappealing the entire concept of ever getting married feels. Geesh. Are there no normal women left in the world?

6) maybe, just maybe all mothers end up crazy like mine. Maybe it's a hormonal thing.

Universal solvent. Universal solvent. Maybe if I say it enough times, I'll start to believe it. Universal...

Today I caught tictactone at the madeinsingapore outdoor performance, and they weren't half bad (I especially like their percussion effects) nevermind that I've known Roy, one of the band members since... a long time ago.

Electrico was rained out however, and we adjourned to... somewhere else, where a strange set of circumstances led me to wind up on a wooden swing outside a bakery getting some unnecessary exercise and being drizzled on, but only very slightly.

It was actually quite enjoyable, and pleasantly quiet. Despite the 3 women present doing the girltalk thingie. heh heh.

Oh yeah and i had the distinct pleasure of meeting 2 other friends and ex classmates from waaaaaaaay back today. That was nice, too.

Stars and Moon has been completed.

Check out the outtakes and director's cut. heh heh heh.

Chapters 12 and 13.

bugger. still 1 more to go. will this torment never end??!?!?

Thanks to my usual impeccable ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the one day I didn't manage to get my hands on the car to wander down to my fencing lesson was the one day it pissed down hard, complete with lightning and thunder.

Naturally, at the time, I was on the road trying to flag down a taxi with limited success (initial plan of trying to walk to the train station was quickly abandoned as a clear blue sky suddenly turned into a heaving mass of cumulonimbus stormclouds).

Okay, I'll admit that I secretly like walking in the rain, it's probably an English thing or something. And after a hot, sweaty session of... fencing (funny how sex seemed the most appropriate word there, damn alliteration) I guess a walk in the rain is the next best thing to a soak in a hot tub.

The experience soon turned into a soak in lukewarm to chilly water as the wind picked up, so whilst I felt like a fish in water I decided to shelter the storm out in the nearby Ubi Driving Centre. That and the lightning bolts which I swear someone was hurling in my general direction (ha. lightning. that's something we don't get in london)

Naturally I couldn't resist the temptation to drip into some local fare (hmm tasted strangely of salt water) and I had the following cathartic realisations over lunch :

1) there is something out there called Pepsi X energy Drink. It's pepsi with loads of caffeine in. How ingenious. Whoevercameupwiththatplan?whatarush!
imeanseriouslyaguycouldgetseriouslyhookedonthisstuff.......................
anyhow.

2) the one local taste I could never find in all of london - and yes, the only one. because believe you me, london has almost everything in, as well as a lot of other sick stuff you dont get here - was the familiar, soothing taste of a fifty cent cup of teh.
I think it's probably something to do with the water - in england the water doesn't have all this healthy and nutritious added flouride and chlorine in it... but a nice cuppa teh is simply. marvellous. swoon. I could never replicate it, try as I might with any amount of sugar and condensed milk, and dammit i know i was using the same tea bags.

During the cab ride home I realised that there's something quite wonderful about the silvery light cast on a rainy day, the way it wetly comes off tree trunks and flowers and the road in a slightly opalescent sheen.

Having a natter over my bloody mary last night with a friend, I couldn't help but pause when she said there was nothing to do in Singapore.

Actually, I think there's plenty to Do in Singapore. There's just nothing to See.

I guess the trick is to start looking at other things, like the people around you, and how they interact with you, and each other... Sigh. How mundane.

Chapter 11 is complete.

1 chapter to go.

(possibly 2 at the most)

Sometimes I feel so utterly alone. It wouldn't matter if a hundred people read this page, or a thousand, or ten thousand. It wouldn't matter if I was surrounded by friends, or feeling pensive standing alone by the Thames at sunrise. It wouldn't matter if I had a good woman on my arm, or, for that matter, bad.(although the bad ones are always more fun, innit.)

I know, I know. It's all in my head.

*****
I found this post today by accident. I like his account of the archtypical National Day Parade. Pfiffle. Nice neologism. I like.

*****
I took a trip down memory lane today.

I hadn't meant to, and memory lane turned out to be called Hospital Avenue. As I walked down it on some trivial errand for my future employers, I was hit by a sudden sense of deja vu. The further along the road I walked, the more real the memories felt, and then I knew that I had been here before.

Ghosts of people seemed to walk around me; I remembered walking with a small group of doctors to a lunch where they would try (futilely, in two of our cases) to persuade us not to do medicine, and whinge and gripe about what it really meant to be a doctor before telling us not to be put off because as far as medicine is concerned, the sky's the limit; it felt like only moments ago the words came off my numbed lips : But the way you tell it, the sky has a low ceiling.

I began to remember a certain forensic pathologist, father to one of the Legends that, apparently my cousin would later shag and tell on; but I remembered instead a kindly man with a sense of humour bordering on insanity who washed his hands too many times a day. The images came faster and more confusedly; I remembered a jolly fat man everyone called the Incredible Super Fat Man, I remembered the smell of "belahchan" (do you want to smell a dead body?) I remembered. I remembered. I remembered.

And as I walked around unfamiliar buildings, my feet taking the lead from me, I wondered... is that it? Is it that one? And then I rounded the corner, and with growing certainty, I knew it was this one.

I walked around to the front.

They've changed the words on it, from ISFM to SHA, but it's the same building.

Exactly the same building.

And I remember...

1) Real-life Dilbert, complete with frazzy hair and flipped back tie.

2) ultra-cool-man parking attendant with The Walk and The Oakleys

- somewhere along the way, Siglap has become the Sunset blvd of Singapore. Definitely.

3) Catching The Weeping Camel (yet another film feste thingie) which though draggy was also very good. Very sincere.

*****
I realised today that there are other crazy mothers out there... (Cue X files theme music)

*****
It's gradually beginning to dawn on me that a major pulling factor in a female for re-minisce is a certain way with words - written and spoken. It's hard to put to words, something about the confidence with which the language is employed, ready wit, and consistency (ie 99.999% - 100% error free). An accent sometimes helps too. heh.

(That, and, of course, the mandatory looks and personality thingummies that all other males always rhapsodize about. So unlike the typical male who just cares about cup size, re-minisce is triply screwed... :
that's probably why he's still single and available. hint, hint.)

heh.

Bugger, bugger, bugger bugger and bugger.

Thanks to a moment's stupidity, I am bookless. Well that's not the problem per se, it's more the fact that I was half way through Johnny and the Bomb, and now I am not. I guess I have to move on to the sequel, without finding out how the last book ended (aaargh!)

Think. think.

Drat it, I either left it in a friend's mum's car (unforseen car-ride buggerit) (high probability) or... in a plastic bag (moderate probability) or in a restaurant (low probability) or... or... thinks. Okay I've narrowed it down to three possibilities.

Sod it, too much effort.

Guess I'll just have to get my hands on another copy.

******

Age is definitely catching up on me. I really hurt today! This is a first for me, usually it's just a few twinges.

Interestingly, the women I've met so far have

1) brutally ignored my flagrant pleas for sympathy

2) called me a wimp

while the two taxi drivers I encountered today variously recommended traditional african chiropractic - On, man.... and suggested I attend a hospital, without so much as a grunt from me. (think taking 5 min to get in and out of the cabs clued them in)

yep, we're clearly not in the twentieth century anymore.

*****

In other news, I'm glad a friend's scope thingie turned out clear. (as expected.) Repercussions would have been... nasty.

*****

In yet other news, I survived Oct 19th. Yet another one. Another chalkmark on the wall of life, another statistic as time goes by, another moment to forget, till the next chalkmark arrives, frighteningly quickly. And then the next, and the next.

We are none of us eternal... but I feel. Old.

gosh, I'm losing track of the things I've done. Being a bum is actually quite an effort.

I've watched - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at long last. yayy. And it was good. Rather good. Nothing to do with the 2 female leads either. Or the male for that matter. I liked the sepia film-noir touch, out of focus at times... it was neat.

I've walked the length of the (nice part of the) Singapore river twice, in one... it'd be really quite wonderful if it wasn't so hot in this country. The lights coming off the water are really quite pretty.

Seen the inside of an MNC work-cubicle while waiting for V to knock off work, and imagined for just an instant that it was mine. What a lovely feeling. :)

Eaten some really nice chicken wings in holland village.

Currently falling asleep in front of this machine so it's time to end here.

One of the many reasons I sometimes wonder about my parents' sanities is that they lock up our house into two distinct sections. It does make a form of sense when we go out, greater security for the inner sanctum. But they also lock it up when I'm in the house too. Meaning I can't get into my room from the computer room.

Today, post humiliation by the energiser bunny teenagers (but the old man put up a good showing and almost had these... kiddy under 17 champion things, despite his audible wheezing and creaking...) I am showerless in Singapore. This is a most distressing state of affairs. If I had the energy in me, I'd pick the lock between the two sub fortresses but it's effort enough for me to move my fingers without keeling over.

*****
Sometimes - not often, mind you - I get strange flashes in my head; I know this all sounds a little crazy but my rationale is that since my mom is clearly at least a little crazy I at least have a reason, being that it runs in the family.

One of the first flashes in my head was when I had to change train at Potters Bar and head back into London thanks to a small mistake made by... uh, myself. It was a strange moment; I saw a train plowing into the concrete divider between the rails, and winding up slanted crazily within the station itself... and I thought how dangerous this station seems (which in retrospect, I don't quite understand, because it looks much like any other rail station)

It was a strange moment several months later when I opened the newspaper to read about the Potters Bar Crash.

I've been getting them more occasionally here in Singapore whilst driving along the road... nasty, gory pictures of cars wrapped around other cars, and bleeding corpses within. Sometimes they look a little like me. So when I get them, I slow down a little and take just a little more care, and nothing happens.

And I wonder if perhaps these are small slivers perhaps of alternate realities, where perhaps I perish in some horrific accident, another car broadsiding me into the road divider, or into an oncoming lorry.

And I also wonder how much longer I have before one day it becomes reality.

Of late, however things have changed just a little, and I see images of myself driving along relatively clear roads, and suddenly yanking the wheel off to the right. I can almost feel the thump as the car strikes the divider, and the rush as I lean forwards, at the once agonisingly slowly, and at the other in the flash of an eyelid, and my head strikes the steering column...

And then I just concentrate on driving, relax that hand just a little, but don't quite take it off the wheel...

I don't know what it all means.

And I don't want anyone to try to tell me, either.

Chapter 10 is complete.

Preparing for the battle royale with the kiddies. At least I get to vent my anger, frustration and sadness.

And I don't want to hate you,
I don't want to take you, but I don't want to be the one to cry.

And that don't really matter to anyone anymore.
But like a fool I keep losing my place
and I keep seeing you walk through that door.

But there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.
There's a reason why people don't stay where they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just aint enough

- Patti Smith & Don Henley, Sometimes Love Just Ain't enough

******
Happy Birthday, wherever You are.

I've just finished reading American Gods, and am experiencing that almost afterglow that comes with reading a very good book. There are people who just write, and then there are writers - craftsmen. I could start a little rant here about how much I hate the way today's world obsesses with insta-celebrity and fabricates neo-talent, but I'm simply not in the mood right now.

I attended mass yesterday at the Cathedral church and was appalled. Not that the priest was barely comprehensible with his strange sing-song ultra-chinky drawl, or that the acting cantor hadn't figured out the art of holding the mike just a few centimetres further from his mouth : these are, to my mind insignificant on the grand scheme of worship, and they can't help themselves. Is okay, just a trifle irritating...

I became appalled during the sermon, which flirted lightly around the first reading of the day before taking off wildly into outer space. Fragmented statements followed statements, tenuously linked together by the all powerful Binder in Faith, the word "So". So St Theresa said... so a woman had no job... so prayer is important... so jews pray five times a day... so muslims pray seven times... so catholics pray three times... so prayer is important.

Somewhere inside me I began to wonder

1) if the man was tripping, or perhaps simply demented

2) how the heck this chap passed through the seminary

And then, to make matters even worse, this man wearing the vestments proceeded to speak a parable that sounded suspiciously more like a real life account, about a woman who became unemployed, and waited and prayed faithfully, and waited, and then her prayers were answered and she received an offer at (name of company!)... which paid $3000 a month, but then she held out, and she waited and prayed some more, and so God heard her and she got a job at (name of company) for $6000 a month, So my dear brothers and sisters, this is the power of prayer.

And I thought : BULLSH*T. YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND CHRISTIANTY, HOW DARE YOU MISLEAD THIS CONGREGATION BEFORE YOU.

God is NOT santa claus. How many Christians in Iraq prayed for peace even as their churches and their bodies exploded into a million pieces of broken glass and wet flesh this weekend? And here we have a priest trivialising everything by turning God from a being we acknowledge works in His own way and not for the way of man - into a celestial ATM.

We should pray to God because we will become RICH? Not spiritually either, but financially?

Is that all there is to us Christians, and Catholics? Are we just mercenaries at heart in this secular world, siding with the winning team??? What of the martyrs who have died for this cause then, what of the carmelites who swear vows of silence? Is our God nothing more than an idol to worship, who will rain gold and silver down upon our voraciously grabbing hands?

I felt sick - truly sick during that sermon. I had seen it only once before, in a methodist church (prayers for the financial prosperity of the country) : a fundamental misunderstanding of everything Christ-like (did Jesus himself ride around in a gilded chariot wearing a crown of jewels???).

Christianity is not about having all your prayers answered by God - surely a murderer who prays he will not be caught has no right making these prayers? Christianity - as I have heard it preached in countless other churches - is about the difficult road, that leads through the narrow door : how He responds to our prayers is up to Him, and how we pray, and the things we pray for - whether sensibly and responsibly - is up to us. And to be grateful for what we have, and what He deigns to give us. We are not worthy so much as to eat the crumbs beneath Your table...?

Never have I felt so disillusioned or shocked as this, hearing preaching of this nature at a CATHEDRAL. Perhaps, again it's my anglican roots, but the sermons at the cathedrals in England have always somehow been wiser, grander, and lengthier than the sermons heard in backwater little churches - it shouldn't be the case, I know, but unfortunately that's how the real world occasionally operates -- and I had become accustomed to that. Hearing this man preach near-falsehood to a cathedral packed to overflowing by a massive, listening congregation, I couldn't help but wonder : why had they all come? And where would they go from here?

******
I watched Pandamonium (yes, actually spelt that way for some reason) by the BBC over the weekend and it was beautiful.

It told the tale (with, I suspect, a liberal amount of embellishment) of how Wordsworth and Coleridge teamed up to create Lyrical Ballads, and of how Wordsworth was a near-bumbling incompetent, whilst Coleridge was a shooting star burning up with his addiction to laudinum (opium water), and how, in the very end Wordsworth out of sheer malice and jealousy tried to prevent Kubla Khan from being published.

It was visually stunning (stage props, victorian dress, shiny things everywhere) with some of the most powerful cinematic images I have seen (coleridge climbing a tree that turns into the mast of the ship of the Ancient Mariner amidst the storm raging through his tormented, opium-saturated soul) blended masterfully into audio seas of poetry, reaching up almost, it felt, to my soul and dragging it down into the chocolatey depths of lyrical excess.

I'll admit that at times it was a little overdone, and a trifle too cloying for my tastes, but the aftertaste the movie left on my lips was delightful.

Unsurprisingly, it was produced by the BBC. -5 points, leaving it at 94/100 in my books.

******
It's an almost perverse fact to me that I only ever feel the need to write when I'm upset, when a certain unease eats through me in a certain way, somehow releasing the floodgates of the suddenly swelling tides of words that normally lie dormant within the calm seas of my head (picture buoy bells clanging occasionally and not much else going on, maybe the occasional seagull crapping onto a buoy, and you have an image of the inside of my brain. sad, but true.)

It's probably a very ordinary phenomenon, and I'm sure it happens to everyone else.

But the most perverse thing to me is that while I write, I derive no pleasure from it. There is no catharsis, no realease. Only a certain... madness.

I remember.

Muahahaha.

Got this spam mail in my mailbox. Love the way they call their president Mr President, just like the yanks...

*****

From : DR. MRS KEMA CHIKWE
Reply-To : DEBTSETTLEMENTFGN01@HOTMAIL.COM
Sent : 17 October 2004 14:50:37
To : httay@hotmail.com
Subject : PAYMENT RELEASE ADVICE.

| | Junk E-Mail | Inbox


MEMO

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
INVESTIGATIONS/DEBT SETTLEMENT COMMITTE
FEDERAL SECRETARIAT COMPLEX
GARKI, ABUJA - NIGERIA
EMAIL: DEBTSETTLEMENTFGN01@HOTMAIL.COM


Our ref: fgn/idsc/0002/2004
You ref: foreign contractors/next of kin Beneficiaries


PAYMENT ORDER NOTICE


THIS MAIL IS FROM THE OFFICE OF DR. MRS KEMA CHIKWE, CHAIRLADY
INVESTIGATIONS/DEBT SETTLEMENT COMMITTEE HERE IN ABUJA - NIGERIA.


THIS COMMITTEE WAS SET UP BY MR. PRESIDENT AFTER THE MEETING HE HELD WITH ALL
BANKING DIRECTORS AND OTHER TOP OFFICIALS OF OFFICES AND BANKING INSTITUTIONS
BOTH LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL, DUE TO SEQUENCE OF COMPLAINS AND PETITIONS BEEN
SEND TO HIS OFFICE FROM FOREIGN CONTRACTORS, CUSTOMERS AND THOSE CLAIMING THE
FUND OF THIER NEXT OF KIN.


HE MANDATED AND TASK THIS COMMITTEE TO GO AHEAD AND CONTACT THOSE WHO HAVE NOT
YET CLAIM AND COLLECT THIER FUNDS TO GET BACK TO DEBT SETTLEMENT PANEL THROUGH
SENATOR AMADU ABAKIARI ON ITS FAX NO: 2341-7599467,TEL: 234-8028793038 EMAIL
ADDRESS FOREIGNDEBT_FGN@HOTMAIL.COM FOR ONWARD DIRECTION AND QUICK TRANSFER OF
THEIR PAYMENT IMMEDAITELY.


YOU ARE STRONGLY CAUTIONED TO RECONFIRM YOUR INFORMATIONS AND CONTRACT/NEXT OF
KIN DETAILS FOR IDENTIFICATION AND EASY TRANSFER OF SUCH OUTSTANDING FUND INTO
YOUR NOMINATDE BANK ACCOUNT.


WAITING URGENTLY,


YOURS SINCERELY,
CHIEF VINCENT AJAYI.
SECRETARY GENERAL,
INVESTIGATIONS/DEBT SETTLEMENT COMMITTEE.


Cc. office of the president.
Committee file.

*****
I was just thinking about it... this page gets 100 hits of you guys on average a day (I know, it's not many, but I didn't care till now...) -- and I know this is a kinda sad thing to do, but I got to thinking : what if all of you guys (and myself included of course) mailbombed this sad spammer every day, say with a 5 mb attachment. That's 500 mb of email a day. Far more than hotmail's paltry 250 mb capacity. It'd be a victory to the oppressed! power to the people! fight nigerian 404 spammers! fight abuse!!! fight injustice on a global scale!!!!!

okay, okay, it was just a thought...

*****
It's funny how memories work on association, isn't it.
I haven't got the world's best memory (millions of people will attest to this) and it doesn't happen very often for me. Hell, I never remember my dreams, or even if I've even had any - except maybe once every decade or so.

But sometimes, something clicks and I have to stop, if only for a moment to walk over the grave of a memory, or perhaps to stare at an empty point in the present, and remember the headstone of the past.

Standing in a foodcourt hearing a voice from another lifetime opine that the owner of the voice doesn't really want to eat here because there's a funny smell in the air, and almost smelling that barely perceptible smell of burnt wiring that for some reason it had when it was new. That foodcourt is long dead now - the tables and chairs have changed, and someone's tried to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. The smell is gone too.
So this is the smell I'd forgotten.

A chance glance on the walkby at a toy in a toystore, and suddenly you're playing with a balancing game, two metal rods tenuously holding up a ball as you roll it further back towards mars... venus... pluto. A look in someone else's eyes, slightly infuriated as another pair of hands takes the reigns - or rather, sticks. This is the game I'd forgotten...

Sitting in a cafe several days later, across from the toystore where the previous memory happened. So this is the store I'd forgotten.

Standing on a metal escalator platform and pausing, for just an instant as visual memory returns. And the shadows of the past flicker for a moment, almost tangibly enough to touch. But you catch yourself before you reach your hand out and walk dazedly on up the escalator, into the present.
So that is what She looked like, which I'd forgotten.

...currently reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Too cool for words. It's like his animated comics, only better.

*****
According to V, I'm different now than I used to be before. Her gut feeling tells her that re-minisce has learnt how to flirt...

eh? Is it...? Who, li'll old me?

:|

I am not built for this country.

What have I done?

It's so easy to look in on other people's worlds; so easy to see the things they should be doing or the consequences their courses will wreak.
It's a different story when you're the sailboat cast adrift in the storm, when you're the storm-battered, disorientated master of that boat trying to weather out the waves, just trying to stay afloat. To stay alive.

Some of us can't see any better, some of us can't step out beyond the shell and look in upon ourselves - sometimes I envy people like that. Perhaps it's easier that way, all it would take would be to fasten onto some well-wisher's advice and you're back on dry land.

Some of us can, though. And we've been there, we've tried that. We don't know why we're still lost at sea - and part of us begins to wonder if perhaps, at least at some subconscious level, we want to be cast adrift. Perhaps we navigate by starlight to ensure that we never smell land again, and meet as few boats along the way as we can.

******
Listening the other day to the fencing coach nattering on about how he loves Singapore best, because it is safe, I feel that I must have led a charmed life. I survived nearly a decade (mostly alone) in London walking unnoticed alleyways and sidestreets unmolested, a week alone in Sydney, and then a further 8 weeks years later wandering through the city's innards unharmed, and a fortnight in various parts of the united states (LA by night. SF by night.) - even doing the proverbial long-distance greyhound bus-trip one always reads about in sci-fi novels (perhaps that's why I did it : it was a novelty) and walked away from it all unmugged. (unless you count the shameless daylight robbery that is all of San Francisco)

In a way it felt almost anticlimatic, proving all the diehard nationalists wrong.

On the 'plane back, I read an article about four policemen being assaulted by twenty patrons of a Singaporean hawker stall and shook my head in disbelief. I read the articles about the cocaine circle and thought that it was about time it finally happened.

Perhaps crime is part of the natural order of things, and denying its existence or declaring it illegal is too simple a solution.

Perhaps the well-meaning paternalism we've taken shelter under has made us forget what true street smarts are - often I hear Singaporeans trying to be piercing and perceptive by saying so-and-so looks soft and clueless, and so-and-so has street smarts, and I wonder : would they really survive a day on the mean streets of LA - or even London, where girls get dragged into alleys and raped in broad daylight, sometimes?

I suspect that it was the simple things I always somehow knew, without knowing why, and automatically put into practice that kept me "lucky" these past sevenandabit years. Dress down, but not too casual; keep your hands in your pockets (and your wallet), conceal cameras, don't let go of your bags - or at least keep a foot on them - in public places, don't let anyone come too close to you to walk into you, and make eye contact when they try to. Walk down the main street at night, don't take short-cuts. When things turn the slightest bit dodgy, put an extra something into your walk that says you've done this, and been here before - difficult to explain, that last. Perhaps it was just paranoia, but it was paranoia that worked.

It's ironic that the parents still think I'm clueless, and are still convinced that I'll lose my wallet and stuff because I take them off and out when I'm eating (strange habit I've acquired, perhaps through being a doctor - I don't feel "clean" till I've removed my watch and ring, and for some reason the wallet and coins go with them) yet six years ago saw me ranting at my father for dressing in a garish shiny blue bomber jacket with his camera slung round his neck with TOURIST / MUG ME practically written all over his forehead in a hostile city somewhere in europe.

Film feste movie tonight was good, but disturbed me nonetheless.

I think it was Danish, but set in what felt like a very American climate somehow. Perhaps it was the way the female lead kept putting on her discman and playing slow-rock/pop ballad thingies.

The story started with a couple being lovey dovey to the extent of the hairs on my arms standing on end, then just when it seemed that it couldn't get any sweeter, as the bloke was kissy-kissing his wife goodbye and stepping out of their car -- a car came out of nowhere and decapitated the bloke. Okay, it didn't quite (bugger it!) but instead put him in ITU for 24 hours (I was amused to note the lack of C-spine protection... sorry, job hazard...) and then in a regular ward after that, with a fractured spine, and a crushed back. In essence, he'd had a Christopher Reeves done to him.

Naturally, like any other caveman, he turns angsty guilt ridden hero and drives away his girlfriend in his grief. Enter the knight in shining armour figure, a caring, compassionate doctor who empathises with her a great deal, and offers her his shoulder to cry, and cry, and cry on.

Complicate storyline by introducing the doctors wife, who funnily enough was the person who ran down Christopher Reeves deux, and her teenaged daughter, and her two baby sons.

Complicate storyline even more by having doctor empathise the clothes off Reeves Deux's beautiful girlfriend, and shall we say getting into more than her mind, for good measure.

Now we have a storyline as complicated, guilt-ridden and true-to-life as can be.

Employ various lies on Doctor's part to make you feel that he is a complete cad. Doctor naturally falls for twentysomething girlfriend hook line and sinksher (haha) since, well, he's completely enamoured by her (can't hurt that she looks really good with her clothes off), doctor's daughter suspects, wife finds out, blah blah. Big family breakup, Doctor shags girlfriend some more, Reeve's has a change of heart and wants girlfriend back, Girlfriend dumps Doctor for Reeve's, doctor bunks over at best friend's house (another doctor, who has been telling him to plug the girl all he can but not get caught, giggle giggle ougha ougha - to borrow a mannerism from a certain model...) Reeves becomes intolerable yet empathic, breaks up with girlfriend again, but mutually and gently this time (like real), and Doctor has meaningful moments with girlfriend, film ends.

I've bastardised it a fair bit, but it was all very well acted, from the doctor and the girlfriend, down to his wife and kiddies - they made you feel their pain, and boy was there a lot of angst in there.

I guess that's part of what made me uncomfortable with it.

It was too close to home. The Doctor, empathising... just a little... beyond that imaginary line we all draw in our heads whenever it comes to patient-doctor (or in this case patient's rellies-doctor) relationships. Into whosoever's house thou entereth, first do no wives. Or perhaps entereth not their girlfriends. Ha.

The truth is we've all done it. Or rather, we've all had the lines blur on us at some point, whether professionally, or in slightly less formal settings - semi-professionally. All of us doctors - and many of you non-doctors as well. How often have you had someone cry on your shoulder, and how often have you felt tempted to reach out and touch that person's face, wipe away their tears, hold them close for a while... and had that funny twist in your gut as you realise how vulnerable, yet attractive this fragile, tearful, grieving girl is? (Maybe it's my fault for hanging out with rather attractive girls. laughs.) How easy it would be to cross that line...

And how often have you pulled yourself back from that line? It just wouldn't seem... right. It would be unethical. To me, anyhow.

Relationships founded on emotions as weak as pain alone... always fizzle and flounder. I think. And I'd far rather start a relationship in joy, with two people discovering and enjoying each other's companies from the outset. It seems only logical to me that that would be the starting point to something wonderful. I'd rather build my house on rock, than on broken glass.

I couldn't help but feel... a chill, almost, watching the Doctor fall haplessly into the throes of lust/true love with the woman half his age. I don't think this was quite what the movie was trying to get at, but it's a personal fear of mine - drifting into a comfortable, pleasant marriage, cruising along a little more, and then meeting the love of you life. Freezeframe, complete with the zziip! sound that invariably accompanies this cinematic device on all B grade comedies, and overlay the words - What Now? (or What Next? or if you are really perverted, unlike someone as chaste and pristine as myself, Where Next and What Position?) Everytime this happens, for some reason The GodFather's words echo through my mind : "Love the person you marry, don't marry the person you love" and I burn inside against the foolishness of that statement. It fails to take into consideration that there are different kinds of love, and the more potent of the two, the heady, romantic, spine-tingling variety - deny it as much as you will - tends to subvert and bypass logic and common sense, and result in Rather Convoluted Scenarios. Nothing actually has to even happen... the seed of doubt, once planted, begins to grow insiduously...

Another reason the film captured my attention, yet contributed to my sense of disquiet was that every so often, during rather intense moments of - always grief - the scene would switch and become grainy, and depict a soppysweet hollywood romantic moment, usually involving forgiveness or love, two people reaching out and... touching. Smiling. -- and then the camera would cut back to real-time and show two people, stony faced, just being awkward and... ordinary. Everyday.

I came up with two possibilities, the first and most obvious that these were the thoughts going through their heads - this was what one, or both of them really wanted to happen... as opposed to what was really happening. These were the movie moments we all idly wonder about, but never quite make the move to transform into reality. I guess, for the cynic, these were just moments of wishful thinking.

And part of the reason that made me... slightly pensive... was because it's been a very, very long time for me, since I've experienced real-life movie moments, and they seem so... dead and gone now. They seemed to die with my severence of all ties with an old, old friend I once had.

The other possibility (less likely of the two) was that maybe these events were happening, somewhere out there... in another universe. Where things were a little different. Where either the rules of biology were different, or a slightly different chain of circumstances had transpired.

And it made me wonder whatever happened to me, maybe even... to us... in another lifetime; in another reality.

Idle thoughts make... um. Idle. Whatchamacallitthingummygiggies. I used to know that one.

V. asked me after the show if I'd cried, and seemed surprised when I shook my head. I stopped, a long time ago.

It's like Terry Pratchett puts it... sometimes you go so far in one directon you come out the other side.

******
Hours and hours of pool (of the table variety) afterwards, I have now regained my form of old, and can confidently say that I am a mediocre pool player who would get his ass kicked by any one of the teenaged ahlians at the other tables... but at least I can pretend once in a while that my spectacular flukes were intentional. Laughs.

Although the show-stopping shot that ended the night was surprisingly intentional, insofar as the intent went. I was surprised to see it turn into reality. Laughs. Maybe that shows how rarely my... gut desires have been answered of late.

1) Hehehe

2) Err...

3) Laughs The effort put into this one!

and in case you missed them last time around,

4) This land

5) DC

Fatigue treads heavily on sanity sometimes.

Movie tonight was okay; unspectacular in most aspects, intriguing throughout till the last moment when you finally realise that there is to be no plot resolution, then all that remains is a faint bitter aftertaste of confusion, and empathy for the characters' individual guilts.

Moving swiftly on.

*****
Tangible

A few Christmas cards.
- A few Christmas cards.
Sheaffer pen, gold. For the thought. For luck.
- Far-side mug.
Letters - several, handwritten.
Three music scores, handwritten.
Bear in Box.

Blank Birthday cards, unbought, unwritten.

We gave, reminiscence.

I shared a cab home with V yesterday, from the film feste.

Wait, perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear.

I shared a cab home. Approximately thirty seconds into the ride, I began to wonder if our cabbie was tripping. This chap was more talkative than... than... a supermodel on mountain dew (heh. inside joke.) As he spoke, I could almost feel dimes raining down onto me by the dozen. Groan. okay another joke nobody gets.

Anyway, Mr SHA 888E told us how he'd just won the Chattiest Driver awards, kindly bestowed upon him by his Dynamic Duo, an Ozzie and Malaysian Chinese Chick pair who were coincidentally enough, his previous passengers, it was wonderful, like winning an emmy...

(Here, re-minisce very carefully let his hand settle subtly near the door opening mechanism... just in case... you never know. V, naturally, looked radiant as the stream of random words washed over her. Re-minisce figured that mebbe this bloke was just out to impress V, she seems to have that effect on men, and taxi drivers in particular.)

Through the course of the drive to her place, the cabbie mentioned that he'd been driving for fifteen hours staight, was braindead, and had been doing this job for a total of ten days. (oo. time to buckle seatbelt)

We dropped V off and continued to my place (because I am a gentleman, you see. I try my utmost to accompany females home in taxis. Preen. Okay fine, I'm not, and I don't always. bugger it.) and here I figured the driver would clam up in the absence of a fresh-faced female who looks at least ten years younger than she truly is.

Lo and behold, he continues nattering happily away (yup, tripping, definitely.) and re-minisce has the honour of discovering the blokes life and family history, and the other jobs he holds, etc.

Anyway, I think it was utterly and completely brilliant, and whoever employs him should give him a raise and a commendation. I've never sat in a friendlier cab in my life, and enjoyed myself quite as much, sans alcohol. Cabbies in london have the same motor mouths as this chap last night did (in contrast to Singaporean cabbies, who generally drive in stony silence, presumably mulling over the philosophical quandries of the human condition) except they generally employ their talents in making friendly remarks about other drivers' abilities (complete with hand gestures, and interesting terms like up yours and you bastard or you filthy cunt) and taking snipes at poor hapless Mr Blair and his cabinet of toads ministers.

Owww.

Will someone please remind me why I signed up for this fencing thingummagig again.

Aside from the fact that it's addictive... must... fence... dammit. Even if legs and bum fall off...

The coach has this brilliant plan to make me fence his kiddy-trainees next tuesday. Brilliant, just brilliant. I can't wait to face these testosterone charged energiser bunnies on nike-air springshoes. I just can't... wait...

whimper.

Well the last pics have gone up.

The body is hurting this morning, presumably at the thought of having to go for fencing (this is called pre-emptive pain)... groan. Remind me why I signed up for this again...

Guess where I'm at right now? I'm at... The Club.

Sigh. Sometimes I feel like I'm in an episode of Groundhog Day.

Anyway, more photos uploaded to the photolog. Free internet must not go to waste.

The one and only time I've ever wished I had a camera enabled mobile-phone - tonight, driving home after spending almost an hour testing paper aeroplanes (sometimes my life takes strange turns. don't ask.) with v : construction bollards, with this printed on them

lian beng construction. tel : 64726398

...priceless.

*****
Film Feste tonight : (nevermind that I was second pick only because the cute eighteen year old guy couldn't show. sniff. wail. sob. sniff...)

Evil.

Nice movie. Harry Potter sans magic, with more reality and violence thrown in. Several beautiful cinematic sequences too.

Not number 1 best ever rantworthy movie, but nice.

Sh, V's friend opined that the moral of the story is that violence is not the answer, and always use The Law.

I reckon the real moral of the story is, if you wanna get the most beautiful girl in the script into the sack with you, get yourself scalded in the groin, then near froze to death spreadeagled on the ground tied to metal stakes; that's always a dead cert. hee.

*****
Oh I forgot to mention during the holiday journals :

I tried out the sedgeway human transporter at disneyland. It was cool. I wonder if they're illegal here?

*****
Tatler editor caught with cocaine, faces jail term. The news report claimed that Tatler is read in high society.

Ha. haha. haha haha ha hahahaahahahrofl.

groan. sometimes one has to wonder when this stupid country will ever grow up...

Over the years I was abroad, people would always say things like "come back to Singapore!", usually immediately followed by "don't you miss the food?" and then extol the virtues of Singaporean food.

I wasn't terribly impressed since Singaporean food is actually pretty common in London, what with the propensity for Malaysians to set up shop on every other street corner - the only difference really is in the price.

Now that I'm back at home, I'm beginning to wonder if part of the reason I left home in the first place was the food.

One of the few drawbacks of coming from a medical family (although I suspect it's probably just my family) which few people will know about is that docs, or my dad anyhow, believe that sugar and salt are bad for you.

Eating my hawker-fare chicken porridge for lunch (specially bought from the shop, no salt, no soy sauce) and drinking my soya bean juice (specially bought, no added sugar) I'm reminded of my childhood, growing up on water-flavoured vegetables (if boiled, often just eaten raw) and water-flavoured chicken soup. It did give me a fine appreciation for subtler tastes, and it also meant that everything I ate always tasted quite nice to me, especially when eating out (flavour explosion). Now that I've been away for a protracted period stuffing my face on finely flavoured foreign and local delicacies (dim sum, royal china / hakkasan tottenham court road) I'm... having some trouble adjusting to all these natural flavours. I listened with horror last night while my parents Da-Paod (that means ordered home in a doggy bag) some noodles for my brother, without salt or pepper - essentially, noodle-flavoured char kway tiao. The poor sod.

Someone save me...

Much has changed since you last browsed this page.

You didn't notice, did you?

B*stards...

anyhow, for those not in the know,

1) someone has arrived here via this search :
"http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=tall+chubby+pussy+wearing+flowery+silk+panties+posing&csz=&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=&toggle=1"
I hope you found what you were looking for. You deserve it.

2) archiving has been implemented. The scrollbar on the left no longer shows one million previous posts, and the page only shows this month's entries. Please, if you do not agree with this, be sure to tell me post haste so I can go back to the browser-jamming resource-hogging windows-hanging layout I loved and cherished.

3) I've resigned my heart to the fact that belle simply isn't coming back (we want more of those kinky ropeburn sex stories, dammit!) and blast it, my chances of reading her book uncut in this little heavily-censored backwater are remote indeed. Belle falls from her position of grace under the Head Injuries heading to the more everyday Syndromes category.

4) Cancer-giggles has finally earned his rightly-deserved spot as a Head Injury. ("cancerman") Cough. We apologise for this minor oversight. As an aside, you MUST read cancer-giggles' account on american and british politics, as well as his handling of the "Bah" the spammer who sent him the usual rubbishy email about a chance to get rich quick if you send them money. I am disappointed that he didn't quite go the full monty (now isn't that a horrible thought) like the boys at Ebola Monkey do and procure a picture of the scammer holding a placard stating that they are wankers or braindead or something. crying shame.

I'm tempted to start scam-baiting as well. laughs.

5) Re-minisce is having second thoughts about his fencing lesson later this morning... The words Lie-In keep flashing across his brain.

Tonight - dinner at The Club with The Parents. (ie same as every other night for the rest of my existence barring the film festival movies and the odd dinner, unless some kind bird takes it upon herself to marry me)

Seeing as I had nothing to do, I went along. This enabled me to freeload off The Club's wireless internet connection (fortunately they haven't figured out that I'm doing it yet. heh heh.) and upload more pictures to my photoblog, which is now linked on the left under "lacerations". So there're new photos up now. Few hundred left to upload though, I'd estimate about three or four dinner's worth.

In other news, spotted at The Club tonight : gorgeous chick. Heart-stoppingly, ~. 10/10. Of probable Indian-chinese descent (re-minisce doesn't discriminate really, and despairs at chicks of most lineages. re-minisce also doesn't often do the rating thingie, but if he did the mean rating would be 6/10* - cos he's nice - and the median peaks would be at about 7.5) Furthermore, Re-minisce doesn't drool very often, but tonight's chick was something special, and all he'd had to drink was a cup of tea. But also couldn't help overhearing her talking about her boyfriend. Sigh. Ah well, eye candy is always nice.

Thankfully I've been spared the indignity of having to attend (by nature of the Parents going to) the Arabian Nights Theme Dress Dinner, by the Film Feste crew - who I'm becoming quite fond of, really. (uh, of course I was always rather fond of one of them. Hah, now you can't hit me when you see me. :p)

In other news, I am now convinced that my entire family is clinically insane. Sometimes they make me soooo mad.

But since this is not the place to wash dirty linen... I'll just have to fume inside of me.

GRrrrrRRRrrRRRRRRRrr woof.

* - addendum : the mean rating, to attract enough attention subconsciously to kick conscious brain into appending a number. Naturally since re-minisce doesn't do this anyhow, it doesn't happen. Capeche? Note for the women : the mean rating for other males who do this on a regular basis (ie 99.99% of blokes) is either 8/10, or 1/10, depending not so much on the type of guy, but more on how you look at the situation. (eg how much the bloke has had to drink, or when the last time he got any was.)

*****
Cancer giggles has started a brilliant run of articles commenting on the political state of the world today.
Re-minisce has just realised that cancer-giggles is not linked from his blog.
We are working to correct this oversight, please bear with us.

Sometimes when I'm speaking, words come of their own accord; I think the technical term for this is talking bollocks. No, not talking bollocks which would be an abomination unto nature, talking - bollocks.

Last night I heard myself while cautiously skirting ah, delicate issues, say that I make it a principle never to date friends of friends (I think I probably subconsciously pilfered this from someone else, who felt that it led to too many messy situations) regardless of how attracted I am to them.

Some sobre thought much later drove it home to me that although I don't have an exactly prolific date-rate, the women I have been attracted to, and err have made moves on I've always met through my own devices / freak accidents / natural disasters, sans third party.

Ah well. For now, I still steadfastedly refuse to see that vet (strangely the mother hasn't mentioned her this trip back, so presumably she either got married or died) and I'll just go on believing that someday my princess will come. Heh. Oh yesh, and that the press is impartial, and that Singaporean politics is so squeaky clean you can eat off it, in a, uh, chaste way of course. And that Singaporean girls are good girls... haha.

Speaking of which, it's also struck me how many photo-ads feature caucasian models, or models with caucasian features. 's funny, the magazine girls are oriental through and through, and are always is relatively chaste poses with relatively discreet amounts of clothes on. But when it comes to the outright bawdy / bordering on saucy advertisements - it's always some caucasian-looking chick grabbing her boobs or (other bits of anatomy or) summat. Obviously, it's because Singaporean girls are too nice to do poses like that... tsk tsk. tsk.

Muahahahahhaaha.

And Haha, too.

I took an ill-advised run at 11 am today, and decided to do the scenic route - 6 km instead of the customary 2.4 km.

At the 3 km mark I began to feel very odd indeed. It didn't take a genius to recognise the signs of early heat exhaustion, so I sat down for five minutes, felt better, finished the next 3 km (including a sprint up the hill, since for some reason I always feel compelled to charge up hills now when I see them...) and had 1.5 L of water to drink in one long gulp at home. Felt instantly well again after. Just goes to show... this country is too damn hot and humid. They ought to rename it Sweatfromeverypore.

Some time later, while I was playing Bach's Air on a G string (now that sounds decidedly dodgy) on the piano (even dodgier...) my mom wandered in and inadvertently revealed an integral housekeeping secret which explains a LOT about the clothes I grew up wearing (hand me downs from my brother, usually rather drab, occasionally slightly threadbare) which helped contribute to my belief of the myth they built up around me that the family was grovelling in the depths of poverty... just living in a nice house, no big deal... etc.

It's one of the basic tenets of homekeeping that even a swinging bachelor like myself (is forced to get to...) knows :

1) when washing clothes, whites and colours do not mix. (Book of Re-minisce, ch 12 v 1, Bachelorship for dummies)

We've seen it a million times in movies like Spiderman, and... any show involving a single man. Heck, all us blokes have probably "accidentally" done it at least once in our lives thanks to going on the piss the night before, or a fit of absent-mindedness, or trying to get all that washing bundled into the machine 2 min before going to work.

My mum's ingenious solution over the years to this inconvenience is, apparently :

1) THROW OUT ALL THE CLOTHES WITH COLOURS THAT WILL RUN. (Book of mum, Revelations ch 1 v 3)

Gah.

En route to the European Union Film Fest (Round Two!) tonight, we blundered into the guiness-book record thingummy.

The host for the event was droll, dry, caustic, and British - meaning the audience didn't have a fucking clue what he was talking about when he took the mick out of the contestants, who were avidly shoving burgers into their mouths.

After the little sage he interviewed a contestant and asked him what he thought about his lead cheerer-dude.

"I think he was very good, very supportive one."

"o-kay. And I see your friend has an S on his shirt! What does it stand for?"

"S ah. Ahh... Superman lor."

"uh. huh. Ooo...kay. And what about the AA after the S?"

"AA? It means AA lah."

"Okay there you have it folks, tonight's been an AA event!"

... groan. And you wonder why Singaporean women are disillusioned with Singaporean men.

Shortly after, we caught the First Movie of the night, This Very Moment.

Which, in a nutshell, is best described as :

Gag. Spit. Gag. Vomit. The director deserves to be shot! (well i thought so anyhow)

After that we caught Les Fil (The Son) which was much better and redeemed the evening for me.

Yeah, my day in a nutshell. Oh, that and the slightly flat pint of oktoberfest bier I had, and the mass before that, and the church service with mom even before that. (advance warning - waking me up at 7 am...)

Dear Customer,

we are pleased to inform you of several important changes to your regular service, taking effect immediately.

You shall henceforth be charged $100.50 for every browse of this page you make, your credit details have been seamlessly extracted from your computer by a background process named "Microsoft Windows" even as you read this.

Okay, just kidding.

But I am going to implement several changes soon which should reduce the number of death threats I receive daily (kidding, again. And please don't) namely archiving. Yes, yes I finally fell victim to myself at LAX while browsing my page from a credit-card operated payphone. It took FIVE minutes to load... howl. And no ctrl-alt-del keys either. groan.

Somewhat in line with that decision, I'm also starting a photoblog of sorts, here. I doubt I'll have the time or inclination to port over existing pics (posting by bloggerbot is such a pain...) but pics of my bestest ever holiday are still going up. Sigh. I miss california.

Even if vaya doesn't agree, I could swear that the Ambassador to the Netherlands promised us last night that the movie Twin Sisters was going to provide us with some "European Tongue Action." I can't for the life of me come up with any other phonetically similar words that would have made sense... shrug.

(...incidentally, it did.)

*****
2 Fast 2 Furious

One of the minuses (? pluses?) of being home is the propensity for my parents to engage in hypothetical debate with me, which occasionally translates into frightening reality if mishandled.

Today's debate focused upon A Car for Re-minisce (which, naturally, he will have to spend his salary repaying for the approximate period of his lifetime) and whether it would be a nice new car or a second-hand stonker. Re-minisce had settled his mind on second-hand stonker since he realistically figures his chances of earning a starting salary of $20,000 a month are minute, and the stars fell out of his eyes about two decades ago.

The father had actually done the investigative legwork this time (impressive!) and discovered the True Figure of Re-minisce's imminent Celery, err I mean Salary, which amounted to a decent but hardly astronomical figure (sans tax and CPF, somewhat less decent, bordering on indecent but sufficient for re-minisce's simple needs. Oh, and hopefully a sexy pair of Armani spectacles, but that is entirely Alice's fault for putting the idea in his head... heh heh)

Somehow, the Father figured that $x,000 was a large sum compared to his previous estimate, $y,000 (which was, get this, only 1000 dollars a month less) and suddenly he's rhapsodizing about buying re-minisce a nice new shiny sleek droolworthy car!(which re-minisce still has to spend the next lifetime - make that two - paying him back for...)

The case for the proposition ran along the lines that a big flashy new car would get the girls!
quote the rather worldly father : if you're a doctor and you drive a small car, the girl will look at your being a doctor to some extent, but if you drive a shiny fast car, nobody will care what you do for a living...
(in response to re-minisce's irritably voiced "what on earth would I do with a fancy new motor?")

The case for the defence ran along the lines that

1) re-minisce would rather spend fewer lifetimes paying for car, and secure himself humble digs to enable an independent lifestyle which does not involve the Mother freaking out because re-minisce locked the toilet door / re-minisce freaking out because the Mother read his mail.

2) fast cars attract fast women, of the variety generally considered "above re-minisce's station" (unfair generalisation looming, but ramming home points to the Parents is incompatable with subtlety according to previous experiences and the laws of Thermodynamics, Fluid Dynamics, and Reality in General) for instance models and celebrities / others of the ilk keen more on car and spending, than on the person (ie re-minisce) and his unique qualities (ie.. pause. think. err. pause.).

At this juncture Re-minisce re-evaluated the situation based on look on Father's face and opted to go with some Kerryian versatility (the Bush approach was floundering)

... which might actually be quite pleasurable come to think of it, and which re-minisce was more than willing to give a shot at, and he might actually have friends who could recommend him...

Interestingly, the Father immediately backed off in a huff.

"The problem with you is you have no sense of humour. I was just pulling your leg..."

Hee. hee hee hee.

Re-minisce - 1 Father - 0

Reverse psychology Rocks!

I wonder what this says about society in general...

Hmm.

"The most atrocious part of the book can be attributed to Tinkerbell, Paris' teacup Chihuahua. The heiress delves into the world of creative writing, assuming the role of Tinkerbell, and she really didn't want to go there. Tinkerbell tries "never to swear even when [she's] barking mad. A well-bred dog does not swear, even when she's barking or growling." Oh, the world can sleep better now knowing that Tinkerbell Hilton does not swear."

Golly, and she does poor fiction as well.

Maybe it's a recessive gene. Maybe it's cross-cultural as well? snicker

*****
Vioxx Woes

The Vioxx scandal still shows no signs of abating, and by this time nearly everyone and his grandmother knows at least that Vioxx exists.

I've read all manner of reports now alternately condemning and defending it, penned by authorities and ignoramuses alike.

To me, the endrun is - Vioxx is a cox-2 specific inhibitor with no evidence of increased efficacy over conventional non steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, for example voltarol (diclofenac) in patients without peptic ulcer disease.

In the NHS, Vioxx was practically unattainable to the lowly casualty (ie A&E / ER) practitioner since it was clearly indicated for only a subset of patients with existing peptic ulcer disease (PUD) - although the same could not be said of GPs who apparently could prescribe it at their discretion.

I saw many a patient with non-specific abdo pain (ie came in in intense agony, but not with clinical signs of an acute abdo, which resolved with a cocktail of strong painkillers and antacid preperations) who actually responded well to drugs like voltarol, and sent many home with low-doze omeprazole / pantoprazole coverage till their GPs could organise an oro-gastro-duodenoscopy for persistent symptoms to exclude peptic ulcer disease (and, I was always careful to add on the discharge letter, "treat as appropriate" since some - a very very select few - GPs follow letters to the T, and no further... must be all that time spent playing golf and going on holiday with the family eating into their clinical practice time...)

I did see a fair number of cases of NSAID induced gastritis and several perforated peptic ulcers, but my argument against the indiscriminate use of vioxx at the time was more along the lines that greater discriminatory use of conventional NSAIDs, +/- antacid or PPI cover was probably the more sensible action - although at the time there was no suspician of increased cardiac risk, and the known, theoretical renal risk seemed rather remote in otherwise healthy patients : this cardiac risk thing comes as a shocker to us all. Quite possibly the only reason I was against vioxx was because I'd been brainwashed by the skint NHS system into always reaching for the cheaper drug, and instinctively shying away from flashy, new-fangled medications that might actually do our patients good. Laughs.

What I cannot stomach, however are the reports that attempt to defend Vioxx by stating that the absolute risk of a cardiac event remains small with Vioxx. That seems to be just plain irresponsible to me, and I for one am glad Merck Sharp and Dome didn't attempt to defend Vioxx on those grounds, and instead pulled the drug from the market (which makes one suspect that they may have already known about this, ah, minor technical glitch with their wonderdrug?) the second word came out. Be as it may, Vioxx doubles to triples risk of a cardiac event, and that is a highly statistically significant result. Even should a single individual's risk remain low on the drug - think about how commonly the drug was being prescribed when it was pulled from the market : It was the new Bread almost - not even "the next best thing to come along since sliced bread". Small absolute risk in a large number of patients = (relatively) large - and intolerable absolute number of deaths or cardiac events... far worse than a small absolute risk in a small number of patients (which is the best-case scenario for Vioxx in the case of that long-forgotten ideal, "intelligent prescribing). One can't help but wonder just how many people paid the ultimate price for their GP's moment of weakness in being wooed over to the Dark Side by some babelicious... babe... in black (ie drug rep) or some fancy corporate-style Drug dinner party.

The thing that puzzles me though, is the number of ordinary joes coming to Vioxx's defence, stating that they'd rather risk dying than be in pain (I'll try to find that URL sometime. Saw it online somewhere). There are so many alternatives to Vioxx on the market which have been shown to work just as well. Is it really worth dying to prove a point?

Must be the new age Martyrdom.

*****
Bush and Kerry, Fight!

Just in case anyone missed these gems, JibJab.com have created two hilarious spoofs of the whole Presidential Elections thingummy. Link discovered courtesy of msn.com. A MUST SEE. Rated 10 out of 10 purple hearts!

*****
Do the Running Man

2.4 km, 10.50 but in mitigation, there were new challenges not previously seen in the gym, namely hills.

ouch argh.
It was beautiful weather for it today though, cool, slightly breezy, very fine drizzle. Made me think of London in Summer. hehe.

Bugger, mom is calling me for yet torture on the tinkly ivories. Can't feign sleep this time...